Frequency of suicidal thought and self-destructive behavior among females

The focus of the present investigation was to examine the importance of a control group in suicide research and to develop an instrument to distinguish between levels of suicidal thought among subjects who had a history of attempted suicide and among a comparison group of nonsuicidal individuals. The sample was comprised of female university students ranging in age from 18 to 25 years. A 31-item questionnaire designed by the investigator was given to 199 students, 20 of whom were found to have histories of one or more previous suicide attempts. The remaining 179 nonsuicidal subjects were divided into two categories based on the frequency of expressed suicidal thought. Fifty individuals were randomly selected from each of these two groups. The three groups (individuals who had attempted suicide, individuals who had not attempted suicide but who thought about suicide on a frequent basis, and individuals who had not attempted suicide and who thought about suicide on an infrequent basis) were compared on the variables of motivation for suicidal thoughts, history of self-destructive behaviors, probability of a future suicide attempt, and age of first suicidal considerations. A chi-square analysis was performed on each of these items in order to assess the extent to which the items discriminated among the three comparison groups. The differences among the three groups on each of the items were found to be statistically significant at less than the .01 level. The results of the study have provided support for the necessity of a distinction between groups within a nonsuicidal comparison population and for the suggestion that there may be a quantitative relationship between the frequency of suicidal thought and the likelihood of attempted suicide.